The , published Thursday by the left-leaning , polled 309 K-12 teachers from 38 states and Washington, D.C., with fewer than five years of experience in February about educator retention. 

The issues that have been driving teachers away have worsened in recent years, said Weadé James, one of the survey report’s authors. 

“Teachers are expected to be all things to their students. Not just an instructor, but also a counselor … and then when you factor that into the changes we’ve seen in our economy — teachers cannot afford to live,” she said. “We’ve seen this issue become more prominent in the last 10 or 15 years.”

Nearly 70% of respondents said they have considered quitting or have already left their teaching job. When asked why, 77% said working conditions, including student behavior; 73% chose lack of support, such as professional development; and 69% said insufficient compensation. Other reasons included low student achievement and limited advancement opportunities.

While nearly two-thirds said they received resources or programming from their school during their initial year in the classroom, the majority still felt unprepared to properly teach English learners and students with disabilities.

“Many induction programs are one year,” James said. “You get that intensive support in your first year only, and [schools] neglect to recognize that new teachers are still developing and honing their skills through year five.”

About 80% of respondents said their induction programs included mentorship, and 78% said they received professional development. After their programs ended, teachers felt the most prepared to foster relationships with students, provide data-informed instruction and assess progress in learning.

When it came to compensation, about 64% of teachers surveyed said they disagree or strongly disagree that their pay reflects their area’s cost of living. Only 16% said they are adequately paid for the work they do, while 15% said their salary is high enough to support their family.

Respondents were asked to rank policy issues in order of importance for improving early-career teacher retention. Their top three were pay, benefits and mental health support. Teachers surveyed also want access to affordable housing, high-quality professional development and career advancement.

The most popular solution to low pay, chosen by nearly half of respondents, was to increase salary floors for all positions. With the national average starting teacher salary at $46,526, many educators are making less than what they need to live comfortably in any state, according to the survey. Salary floor increases were in New Mexico, where teachers now make between $55,000 to $75,000, depending on their license.

Other suggestions for improving compensation included eliminating student debt, giving additional pay for performing extra duties and providing raises for teachers in hard-to-staff schools and subject areas.

Teachers surveyed said an increase in sick time would be the best employee benefit a school could offer. Respondents also wanted more paid time off, lower health insurance costs, better insurance coverage, parental leave and a retirement account with employer contributions.

The survey found that teachers with access to paid maternity or parental leave were 11% less likely to consider quitting than those without either option. 

The most common suggestion about how to support teacher well-being was to include time off for mental health days in employee contracts. In 2022, Illinois that allowed teachers to use sick time for mental health days. 

Teachers surveyed said they also need mandated planning time during the day — a change that can improve working conditions, said report co-author Paige Shoemaker DeMio.

“When teachers don’t have enough time in their days to do other aspects of their job — planning for the instruction, grading, contacting parents, analyzing student data — that is really impactful on their working conditions,” she said. “It’s causing a lot of stress, and it’s also causing teachers to spend a lot of time outside of their day doing additional work.”

The , released Tuesday morning, used data from 1,419 educators who took the . It found that female teachers — who make up 75% of American educators — are more likely than males to experience challenges that make it harder to juggle work and their personal lives. 

Nearly three-quarters of female educators said it was somewhat or very difficult to change their schedule to accommodate personal matters, compared with 62% of male teachers. About 63% of female teachers and 48% of male educators reported it was hard to take a personal phone call during work hours.

More than half of female teachers said they were frequently or always too tired for activities in their private life because of their job. Only 27% of male teachers reported the same. About 44% of women said they worry about work when they aren’t at school, versus 33% of men. 

A main factor that could contribute to the gender gap is the number of hours spent on household duties, including caring for children, according to the survey. Female teachers with children reported they spend 41 hours on chores and child care, versus 30 hours for male teachers with kids. The men also reported having more time for themselves, spending 45 hours on leisure activities. Female teachers with children clocked only 33 hours.

“One of the really big drivers of challenges with job flexibility and its relationship to well-being is the amount of time that teachers, particularly female teachers, spend on household duties, particularly child care, outside of working hours,” said Elizabeth Steiner, a survey co-author.

The RAND study also compared teacher data with findings from the , which polled 507 adults who have a bachelor’s degree and work similar hours. The nonprofit found that educators experienced a worse work-life balance than the other adults. 

More than 70% of educators said changing work schedules to accommodate personal or family matters was somewhat or very difficult, compared with 22% of similar working adults. Educators spent on average 25 hours per week on household duties, while other adults used only 16 hours. 

Teachers also got the short end of the stick with benefits, according to the survey. More than half of educators and a third of adults with other careers said they received average benefit packages — paid sick leave, retirement, health insurance and personal time off. But only 29% of teachers received above-average benefits, compared with 49% of similar working adults. 

“When teachers reported better benefits packages — things that included, for example, paid parental leave or slightly more days of paid time off — they reported fewer work-life balance challenges and better well-being,” Steiner said.

Paid parental leave is a key benefit that could boost job satisfaction for educators, she said. Only 30% of teachers with children said their schools offer paid parental leave that was separate from other time off.

“More districts are offering it and paying attention to how important it is, but it is not universal,” Steiner said. “When paid parental leave isn’t available, teachers tend to use the paid leave that they have access to [for] time off to care for their new children, which leaves them with little to no paid leave when they return to work to address things like their own mental health or doctor’s appointments.”

The survey results link insufficient work-life balance to poor well-being for teachers. RAND research found that 2 out of 3 teachers experience job-related stress, and more than half feel burned out. 

In an open-ended survey question, teachers were asked to describe what their school or district could do to help them balance work and home responsibilities. More than half said they couldn’t come up with an answer because “their school or district did not provide any support to help them achieve this balance.” 

The rest said job flexibility could improve work-life balance. Respondents suggested that schools consider mental health or wellness days, adjustable work hours and opportunities for using planning periods to address personal matters. Some said taking days off in smaller increments or allowing occasional remote work hours would help.

“Teachers said that it was helpful when school leaders helped them set work boundaries, such as limiting meetings and minimizing administrative work, and messaged an expectation that teachers keep work at work,” the report said. “[These] could be a low-cost way for school leaders to help improve teachers’ work-life balance.”

Teachers are most likely to report a shortage of “people resources,” with two-thirds saying they don’t have enough teaching assistants, aides or paraprofessionals. 

This “has a huge impact in the classroom in what teachers are able to do,” said Andrea Malek Ash, a senior research consultant at Gallup who led the survey.

Ash stressed that even as teachers struggle to access fundamental resources, they still expressed a desire to improve their practices through professional growth opportunities.

“So it’s like this hierarchy of needs,” she said. “Teachers really have to come at it right now from both ways: They’re trying to improve themselves, and they’re still dealing with not having enough furniture. That’s something that really stood out to me.”

A dearth in resources has long plagued educators, with as many as having to reach into their own pockets to buy materials for their students and many relying on to solicit help from private donors. According to the amount teachers spent climbed during the pandemic, according to , though schools were also able to spend emergency COVID funding on supplies and furniture. And this year, a typical assortment of back-to-school supplies will cost an average of , at least partially due to the Trump administration’s tariff policies.

School staffing, too, has remained a persistent challenge for public schools: as of June 2025, an estimated positions were either unfilled or filled by teachers not fully certified for their assignments. Yet, the number of educators nationally saw a steady increase between potentially due to the emergency relief funding. With that money sunsetting just over a year ago, it’s not yet clear what impact that might have on combatting ongoing shortages.

Teachers reported that professional growth opportunities and materials are two of the most important factors when it comes to job satisfaction: 77% of teachers who have adequate resources report being satisfied at work, versus 44% of those who do not.

Gallup surveyed thousands of teachers from the RAND American Teacher Panel over the course of one school year: 1,989 teachers were surveyed between October and November 2024; 2,046 in January 2025; and 2,167 between April and May 2025. 

The report is part of a led by Gallup and the to study Gen Z and youth perspectives, especially as they relate to education. Since teachers play such a large role in a student’s engagement and success in the classroom, researchers said it was important to learn about their needs as well and will gather their views over the next few years.

Across the country, teachers overwhelmingly reported a shortage of school-based staff: almost two-thirds said their school didn’t have enough teaching assistants, aides, paraprofessionals or behavior intervention specialists and 62% said they didn’t have enough mental health resources or special educators.

Jessica Saum is a special education coordinator, former special education teacher and the In her current role, she works to ensure students’ receive the special education services they need and supports educators in various K-12 settings. Saum said she sees these shortages reflected in classrooms across her district — especially among paraprofessionals.

“The paras are typically doing some of the hardest parts of those jobs with the least amount of education and training,” she said, leading some to decide not to go into teaching or leave their jobs altogether. 

A shortage of paraprofessionals makes the general education teacher’s job “much harder,” Saum said. “As a special educator, I depended on my para educators to complete that classroom support. I needed them to be able to help me meet the needs of all the students.”

While 72% of teachers either agreed or strongly agreed that they had the equipment needed to teach effectively, 24% said they didn’t have enough classroom furniture, 25% didn’t have enough laptops or classroom computers and 35% didn’t have adequate printing supplies. Funding is likely one barrier to access, said Ash, but bureaucracy appears to be another: 1 in 3 teachers said the process they need to go through to order materials is “very” or “somewhat difficult.”

Even if school leaders don’t immediately have the budget to buy requested materials, Ash said, just being aware of teachers’ needs and making the acquisition process easier creates a better experience for educators.

Some of these trends held true across schools, regardless of family income. For example, teachers who work in wealthier schools — where less than a quarter of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch — were just about as likely (23%) to report not having enough classroom furniture as those who work in a school where up to 100% of students qualify (25%).

And teachers in these wealthier schools were actually more likely (68% vs. 64%) to report a shortage of teaching assistants or paraprofessionals, according to additional data from the study provided to The 74 by Gallup.

Yet, when it came to technology, that flipped. Teachers in low-income schools were significantly more likely to report not having enough laptops (34% vs. 18%) or printing resources (43% vs. 28%).

The survey also found that about half of teachers say their professional development is not grounded in students’ needs or learning. They cite collaborative planning as the most valuable kind of development and 43% report observing other teachers as the most worthwhile activity — though just 1 in 3 teachers say they get that opportunity.

“So the most beneficial ones were the ones that we’re also missing,” said Ash.

The Walton Family Foundation provides financial support to The 74.

Equitable grading practices strive to make grades more accurate and fair by removing bias and separating behaviors — like handing in a late paper — from academic mastery or understanding the subject matter. The educators were polled as part of the first nationally representative teacher survey on the issue that was conducted by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in partnership with RAND. 

“Lenient grading, grade inflation. It kind of feels like maybe it doesn’t really matter that much, and it’s a victimless crime or something,” said Adam Tyner, who authored on the survey and is the national research director at the Fordham Institute, a right-leaning education reform think tank. “But it actually has real consequences for students.”

He pointed to demonstrating that when teachers lower standards, students learn less.

“I hope people will listen to the teachers and really take it seriously that there are legitimate concerns with some of these policies that need to be aired out and discussed,” he added.

At a last week hosted by the Fordham Institute and education nonprofit , researchers met to discuss the report’s findings. Adam Maier, analytics director at TNTP, noted that “these practices are attempting to solve a real problem.”

Current, traditional grading models send kids mixed signals that don’t accurately reflect their achievement, he said. In the process of addressing these concerns, though, reformers are “stripping away some of the other useful things about grades.”

To understand the implications, researchers asked teachers about five policies, which they said they took from Joe Feldman’s 2018 book and deemed to be particularly “controversial.” Those included:

• No zeros — Mandates that teachers assign a minimum grade of 50% (or something similar) for missed assignments or failed tests.
• No late penalties — Gives students the right to turn assignments in late without penalty.
• Unlimited retakes — Gives students the right to retake tests/quizzes without penalty.
• No homework — Prohibits teachers from including homework assignments in a student’s final grade.
• No participation — Prohibits teachers from basing any part of a student’s grade on class participation.

At least a quarter of teachers said their school or district had adopted each of the three most common practices: unlimited retakes, no late penalties and no zeros. This was especially true for middle school educators, about 40% of whom reported they were in use.

While teachers didn’t support the majority of the policies, some were particularly unpopular, such as mandating a minimum 50% grade, regardless of work completed. The vast majority of educators surveyed (81%) said this was “harmful,” a trend which held true regardless of the teacher’s race, years of experience or the race of the students. 

This criticism was mirrored in the open response portion of the survey, where it was “the most mentioned—and most widely ridiculed—grading policy,” according to the report.

“I don’t believe there was a single unambiguous comment in support of no zeros or minimum grading,” Tyner said.

“We have gone to the ‘Do nothing, get a 50’ grade policy,” wrote one teacher. “Students have figured out that, if they work hard for a quarter (usually the first) they can ‘coast’ the rest of the year and get a D.”

Feldman, who authored the book on these practices, challenged the findings in an interview with The 74, arguing that the survey’s authors misrepresented his theories and practices.

“What they seem to have asked is what are the teachers’ opinions of equitable grading practices when we deliberately mischaracterize and oversimplify the practices, and regardless of whether the teachers were trained to use the practices or even know what they are,” Feldman said.

In an emailed statement, Tyner refuted this claim saying, “We do subject all of our work to external peer review, and this report was reviewed by Dr. Sarah Morris, who wrote her doctoral dissertation on the implementation of these policies.”

Feldman did note that there’s been a tendency within districts and schools to oversimplify the practices, especially in cases where, “they were searching for a quick solution during the pandemic or they were just jumping on the equity bandwagon.”

When that happens, and educators are mandated to use flawed versions of the practices, it unsurprisingly doesn’t go well — a sentiment he thinks may be reflected in the survey results.

“There was pushback and a lot of resentment and misunderstanding and [it] sort of collapsed or exploded,” he said.

‘Dooming it to failure’

Educators have long grappled with how to accurately and fairly assess students, and debates about the benefits of “traditional” versus “equitable” grading practices are not new, though they have become particularly divisive in the years since the pandemic. 

Researchers have been studying these reforms and standards-based grading for decades and argue that, when implemented correctly, they should more accurately reflect what students know and correct for both inflating — and deflating — grades. 

But, a misunderstanding of the true principles, a lack of proper training for educators and a rush to quickly adopt a complex new system has often led to messy execution, according to experts.

“The ideas … on the surface are good, but it’s just that adaptations or nuances and caveats need to be taken into consideration when you move to implementation,” said Thomas Guskey, professor emeritus at the University of Kentucky’s College of Education and a leading expert on grading and assessments.

Guskey said the survey results track with what he’s heard from district leaders across the country who are trying to use Feldman’s policies. Guskey is optimistic, though, that people will be able to distinguish between grading reform efforts as a whole and Feldman’s practices in isolation.

“My great fear,” he said, “is that people will look at this, and they will see these five particular aspects of ‘grading with equity’ as being corrupted … What I hope is that it prompts people to probe these more deeply, understand the nuances behind them and see what adaptations need to be made within each of the five to make sure it does succeed.”

Tyner agreed that there were rigorous ways to implement standards-based grading and more equitable practices.

“Not everything associated with trying to make grading more fair or more equitable or more accurate is lowering standards,” he said, “And I think we should absolutely advocate for those policies.”

In a Tyner released last year, he looked at 14 different equitable practices, some of which he found were useful and rigorous. For example, rubrics and anonymized grading are tools which can combat racial bias in grading, which he noted was real and well documented, without lowering standards. 

For this most recent survey, the authors zoomed in on five of the 14 practices “that have stirred the most controversy around the country and that we were hearing about in the media a lot.”

While just over half of teachers worked in a district with at least one of the policies, only 6% reported adoption of four or more and 2% reported adoption of all five, a finding which surprised Tyner.

“I kind of thought we were going to find some districts that were doing all of this stuff, and most districts would be doing none of it,” but instead, “there’s a lot of districts that are just maybe experimenting with one or two.” 

Ken O’Connor, an author and consultant who has spent decades studying grading reform, pointed to this finding as a problem with implementation: These practices are not meant to be used piecemeal but rather as part of a cohesive system, he said.

By picking one or two in this way, “You’re almost dooming it to failure,” he said. It’s essentially like saying, “I want to bake a cake, but I’m only giving you half the ingredients.”

Teachers did, in fact, critique these policies: Just over half (56%) reported that the “no late penalties” policy was harmful, and the majority said basing part of a student’s grade on participation and homework was helpful — in opposition to equitable grading practices. In their open responses, teachers also suggested that they feel pressure to inflate students’ grades, even if there aren’t explicit mandates to do so.

“Counselors can override teachers’ grades if a parent calls because they are concerned that their child’s grades aren’t fairly representing the student’s efforts,” wrote one.

Notably, such a policy is never advocated for in equitable grading theories.

The “unlimited retakes” policy was the most embraced, with 41% of teachers reporting it was helpful and 37% reporting it was harmful.

“I like the idea of students being able to edit/improve their work based on feedback from the teacher,” wrote another teacher. “However, if they do not have deadlines or policies in place to encourage them to try their best the first time, teachers will have to grade almost every assignment more than once.” 

While most educators (58%) said it was important to have clear, schoolwide grading policies, a substantial minority (42%) believe that they should be able to use their own judgement when it comes to grading.

Tyner said moving forward he hopes educators will “take the best from the reforms and from traditional grading, because there’s nothing wrong with trying to make grading more fair and more accurate. It’s only when the implication is that we might be lowering standards and expectations for students that we need to just be really, really careful with what we’re doing.”

The RAND study found a 22-point difference in stress levels and a 6-point difference in the degree of burnout — gender disparities that have held constant since at least 2021. Female teachers are also almost twice as likely as similarly educated women in other professions to report frequent stress.

These trends are worrying not just for teachers, but also for students, said Elizabeth Steiner, senior policy researcher at and the lead author of the report.

“Teacher well-being is … really important because it is related to how well teachers are able to do their jobs, which is related to how well students learn,” she said.

“Having a teacher who is present and engaged and putting forth their full effort to help the students they teach could make a real difference,” Steiner added, “as opposed to a teacher who is less engaged or struggling with mental health, or poor well-being, or poor work-life balance.”

Steiner said she is particularly concerned about female teachers, especially because they make up about of the workforce. A RAND report this fall will explore which factors may be driving the disproportionate levels of stress.

Overall, 62% of teachers surveyed reported frequent job-related stress this year, up 3 percentage points from last year but down from the record high of 78% in 2021. Still, they were almost twice as likely as similar working adults to report persistent stress. Teacher burnout levels dropped over the past year, from 60% to 53%, yet remain 14 points higher than levels reported by their non-educator peers. 

Black teachers were more likely than their white peers to report burnout (59% versus 53%), symptoms of depression (25% versus 18%) and an intention to quit (28% versus 14%). Notably, they were less likely to report frequent job-related stress, a discrepancy that Steiner called “a puzzle.”

The findings, published June 24, come from the fifth annual State of the American Teacher Survey, which looks at well-being and retention for K-12 public school teachers. Researchers focused on sources of job-related stress, pay, hours worked and intention to leave. This year’s sample consisted of 1,419 teachers.

Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers union, said she is “not surprised at all by these findings.” The “chaos and confusion” of the current political moment, she said, has made being a teacher an even more stressful job.

“Meeting the needs of whole students,” she added, “has gotten increasingly more difficult.”

Despite reporting persistently high levels of stress, the share of teachers overall who said they intend to leave their jobs by the end of the school year fell 6 percentage points, from 22% in 2024 to 15% this year. Fewer teachers also reported feeling burnout this year (53% versus 60%). The relative consistency of responses since 2023 suggests teacher well-being may have stabilized since the pandemic, according to the report.

The most common source of job-related stress for teachers across the board was student behavior (52%), followed by salary (39%). Black teachers were less likely to attribute their stress to student behaviors but more likely to point to salary as a key factor.

This could be tied to their pay: Black teachers, on average, reported earning 6% less than white teachers. Researchers think this could be, at least in part, driven by where teachers live and whether their states have collective bargaining units.

Teachers overall reported an average base salary of approximately $73,000 in 2025, a roughly 4% increase from 2024 but still significantly lower than the $103,000 average salary reported by similar working adults. 

Just under half of teachers (46%) said they were better off financially than their parents, compared with 61% of similarly working adults. 

has shown that while pay is a major contributing factor to teacher satisfaction, it is not the only one.

“If there are ways to look at the constellation of factors that include pay, administrator support, hours worked and a cornucopia of other working conditions that could help improve those things, that — based on what we found — seems like a solid recipe for improving retention and improving teacher engagement in their jobs,” Steiner said.

Hours and benefits also may play a role in overall stress and burnout levels: On average, teachers this year reported working 49 hours a week — four hours less than last year, but still 10 hours more than they’re paid to work, on average. 

And while more teachers had paid sick leave and employer-funded health insurance than similar working adults, fewer reported receiving paid parental leave. Just over a quarter of teachers said they receive this benefit, versus about half of similarly working adults. 

Heather Peske, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, which the lack of paid parental leave, stressed its importance.

“It’s both a smart policy to recruit and keep good teachers, and it’s the right thing to do,” she said in an email.

Overall, Peske added, “Districts that offer teachers competitive benefits are better positioned to attract great teachers, reduce turnover and maintain the stable workforce that is essential for students to succeed.”

The poll, published by the research firm and the Walton Family Foundation, includes perspectives from 2,232 U.S. public school teachers.

“[The results] reflect a keen understanding on the part of teachers that this is a technology that is here, and it’s here to stay,” said Zach Hrynowski, a Gallup research director. “It’s never going to mean that students are always going to be taught by artificial intelligence and teachers are going to take a backseat. But I do like that they’re testing the waters and seeing how they can start integrating it and augmenting their teaching activities rather than replacing them.”

At least once a month, 37% of educators take advantage of tools to prepare to teach, including creating worksheets, modifying materials to meet student needs, doing administrative work and making assessments, the survey found. Less common uses include grading, providing one-on-one instruction and analyzing student data.

A from the RAND Corp. found the most common AI tools used by teachers include virtual learning platforms, like Google Classroom, and adaptive learning systems, like i-Ready or the Khan Academy. Educators also used chatbots, automated grading tools and lesson plan generators.

Most teachers who use AI tools say they help improve the quality of their work, according to the Gallup survey. About 61% said they receive better insights about student learning or achievement data, while 57% said the tools help improve their grading and student feedback.

Nearly 60% of teachers agreed that AI improves the accessibility of learning materials for students with disabilities. For example, use text-to-speech devices or translators.

More teachers in the Gallup survey agreed on AI’s risks for students versus its opportunities. Roughly a third said students using AI tools weekly would increase their grades, motivation, preparation for jobs in the future and engagement in class. But 57% said it would decrease students’ independent thinking, and 52% said it would decrease critical thinking. Nearly half said it would decrease student persistence in solving problems, ability to build meaningful relationships and resilience for overcoming challenges.

In 2023, the U.S. Department of Education recommending the creation of standards to govern the use of AI.

“Educators recognize that AI can automatically produce output that is inappropriate or wrong. They are well-aware of ‘teachable moments’ that a human teacher can address but are undetected or misunderstood by AI models,” the report said. “Everyone in education has a responsibility to harness the good to serve educational priorities while also protecting against the dangers that may arise as a result of AI being integrated in ed tech.”

Researchers have found that AI education tools can be incorrect and biased — even scoring academic assignments than for classmates of any other race.

Hrynowski said teachers are seeking guidance from their schools about how they can use AI. While many are getting used to setting boundaries for their students, they don’t know in what capacity they can use AI tools to improve their jobs.

The survey found that 19% of teachers are employed at schools with an AI policy. During the 2024-25 school year, 68% of those surveyed said they didn’t receive training on how to use AI tools. Roughly half of them taught themselves how to use it.

“There aren’t very many buildings or districts that are giving really clear instructions, and we kind of see that hindering the adoption and use among both students and teachers,” Hrynowski said. “We probably need to start looking at having a more systematic approach to laying down the ground rules and establishing where you can, can’t, should or should not, use AI In the classroom.”

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation provides financial support to The 74.

The discovered ongoing issues including increased classroom disruptions and declining trust between teachers and parents, principal and colleagues. The researchers analyzed data from the which collected responses about school wellness from roughly 123,000 to 130,000 teachers in more than 3,300 Illinois schools annually from 2019 to 2023.  

“I would have thought the 2020-21 school year was the big disrupted year,” said Cory Koedel, a University of Missouri professor who worked on the study. “It’s quite reasonable to think that was the worst. But this data is telling us that’s clearly not true. And our findings give no indication that working conditions will rebound naturally now that the pandemic is behind us.”

The 5Essentials survey identifies five main indicators of school success: effective leaders, collaborative teachers, involved families, supportive environments and ambitious instruction. Each year, teachers and students are asked to rate their experiences.

The most dramatic change after the pandemic began was in classroom disruptions. A found that 70% of educators said students in their schools misbehaved more than before the pandemic. In , the percentage increased to 72%.

Koedel’s research found the quality of student discussions and professional development also declined from 2019 to 2023. The trust teachers felt toward parents, principals and other educators didn’t worsen from 2019 to 2021 but deteriorated from 2021 to 2023. Teacher safety significantly improved in 2021, when most schools shifted to online learning, only to drop again in 2022 and 2023, once students returned to classrooms. 

A few working conditions initially declined but improved from 2021 to 2023, including collaborative practices and student engagement in learning

The study also analyzed Illinois survey data by school demographics. Teachers from schools in wealthier communities had better working conditions, but experienced the same decline as educators in lower-income schools.

Schools where instruction was delivered online during the 2020-21 school year also had larger declines in working conditions compared with schools where learning was in-person.

Koedel said that while the study focuses on Illinois, educators nationwide have experienced similar working conditions.

“There’s really no reason to think Illinois is some weird place that’s so different from every other [state]” Koedel said. “In my opinion, we should expect Illinois to be like other places, because a lot of what’s happening in schools there is happening everywhere.”

For example, other national studies have highlighted the link between teacher job satisfaction and educators’ well-being and retention. 

A from the RAND Corp. found that teachers who had administrator support and felt they belonged in their schools were less likely to report burnout and job-related stress. Those who had strong positive relationships with their colleagues and felt their students were engaged in learning were also much less likely to report poor well-being.

“There’s a deeper question of, like, ‘What exactly is it that’s driving this?’ ” Koedel said of the University of Missouri results. “I believe this is telling us we have made some sort of bad decisions about how we’re running schools, but this doesn’t tell us what decisions we made that were bad, right? So I’m trying to understand that better.”

Teachers said they had to skip over classic texts like To Kill a Mockingbird and avoid historical figures like famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass out of concern for parental complaints and possible legal blowback. One high school science teacher who the study quoted anonymously described an atmosphere of “fear and paranoia” around simply covering the content laid out within state standards.

The , which was published by the Rand Corporation on Wednesday, surveyed over 8,000 educators from across the country. It asked whether officials had passed policies limiting the teaching of topics related to race and gender and, if so, how those rules had impacted their instructional decisions.

Confusion was so widespread, researchers found, that roughly one-quarter of teachers said they didn’t know whether they were subject to restrictions. Among teachers working in states that had enacted classroom censorship bills, less than a third actually knew that the laws were in place.

“At times there is that confusion about, ‘What am I allowed to say in the classroom, what am I not allowed to say?’ ” lead researcher Ashley Woo explained.

In Florida, where the state’s censorship bill also extends to higher education and the workplace, and where Gov. Ron DeSantis recently a forthcoming Advanced Placement course on African American studies, the state Department of Education rejected the idea that their law might be unclear to teachers.

“If educators are confused about what can and cannot be taught in Florida schools, the blame lies solely on media activists and union clowns who purposefully sow confusion and mislead the public,” spokesperson Alex Lanfranconi wrote in an email to The 74.

Classroom censorship bills began to proliferate in 2021 as right-wing politicians advocated that schools overstepped in the measures they enacted in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. As some districts added more books written by Black, Indigenous, Hispanic and Asian authors to their curricula and educated staff about how racism operates in society, predominantly white parents in many districts pushed back on the changes, calling them critical race theory.

Critical race theory is an academic framework used to examine systematic racism and is taught mostly in graduate school rather than K-12 classrooms. The term has become a GOP catch-all for lessons related to race. Americans largely support teachings that address racism, but support wanes drastically when the critical race theory label is applied, shows.

Since 2021, legislation has been proposed in 42 states to curtail race- and gender-related teachings. In 18 states, the measures have passed into law, according to an . In at least six states, the rules include penalties for educators or schools that do not comply.

Terrance Anfield teaches English as a second language in Kennesaw, Georgia, where a state law bans teachers from covering “divisive concepts.” 

“The very concepts that will allow the development of our students to become well-rounded, inclusive members of society are being omitted from the classroom for fear of offending the wrong person or committee. This should not be an issue that has involved the districts of Georgia because CRT is typically taught at the collegiate level,” he wrote in an email to The 74.

In the aftermath of those changes, 1 in 4 teachers nationally said their school or district leaders told them to limit discussions of political or social issues in class, a previous found in August.

The non-partisan think tank’s most recent report now shows that a similar proportion of teachers, 24%, have altered their curricular materials in response to the controversy — regardless of whether or not they live in states that have classroom censorship laws on the books. Even in states with no rules limiting teachings on race and gender, 22% of instructors said the nationwide pushback influenced their selection of books and worksheets. 

“The limitations are not just originating from state policies, they’re also coming from other places,” said Woo, the Rand researcher, explaining that educators frequently reported re-designing their offerings because of complaints from parents or “implicit” and “unspoken” messages from district leaders directing them to sanitize lessons.

Colin Sharkey, executive director of the Association of American Educators, emphasized that parents do have a right to transparency over what their students are learning. But at the same time, districts should avoid policies that have a “chilling effect” on educators, which can make schools “not a healthy place for learning,” he said.

In the face of pushback, some teachers still expressed resistance to censorship policies. The survey included a free response section completed by about 1,450 educators. Nearly 1 in 5 said they are continuing to include lessons related to race and gender, and made no mention of efforts to make the teachings less contentious. 

“My students are more important than any board policy. If I get in trouble, then it would be worth it,” one educator wrote.

In a profession whose stress levels are , navigating the supercharged climate has made educators’ jobs “even more difficult and less attractive,” in the words of one survey respondent, who teaches elementary school.

School staff may have their hands tied, caught between what is legal and what they think is right. A middle school science teacher said the school’s LGBTQ students are “knowingly suffering and there is nothing I can do about it without risking my job.”

In some cases, districts now require teachers to search for new classroom materials, go through cumbersome approval processes for new curricula or even run lessons by parents before leading them in the classroom, Woo explained. All those steps represent more work for teachers at a time when staff shortages already plague many states and districts across the country, she said.

“All of these things are potentially adding more to teachers’ plates in a time when we know teachers have already experienced a lot of stress,” she said.

Moms for Liberty, a national organization that supports school board candidates pushing for limitations on race- and gender-related lessons, did not respond to requests for comment on whether these policies could worsen teacher burnout.

To district leaders, Woo said, one clear takeaway from the study should be that educators need additional support to comply with a changing legal and political landscape.

“Teachers cannot and should not have to shoulder these challenges on their own.”